Unearthing partition in Bangladesh: A forgotten history of the Indian subcontinent

Three weeks before protests against the quota system began, I travelled across the capital in search of histories of the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, which undeniably laid the foundation for the events leading up to the Liberation War in 1971. Buried deep within memories of its victims and survivors, this history is largely absent from public memory of the city, and in extension, of the country.

The Partition of India in 1947, resulted in the formation of two new countries, namely, India and the two wings of Pakistan, separated from one another by approximately 2,204 km. While both Bengal and Punjab were divided into East and West Pakistan, on one hand, and India on the other, it is the Punjabi narrative which gains traction due to the violent nature of events, accompanied by mass migration, within the span of a single year.

Unlike Punjab, the immediate effects of the Second Partition of Bengal could not be contained within 1947. The slow, continuous migration of minorities would expedite every time a new set of riots would take place on either side of the porous Bengal border, adding onto the refugee crisis which began in 1947.

It was the events of 1971, which triggered one of the largest waves of migration from then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, to India after 1947. Among the millions who seeked refuge were not just Hindu and Muslim Bengalis, but also members of Bangladesh’s “Urdu speaking” population, many of whom had, less than three decades ago, migrated from the region for Pakistan. The Liberation War, which followed, engulfed the entire region shortly after. It continues to be viewed and remembered by Bangladesh, India and Pakistan through different lenses.

Turning to the Bangladeshi lens, if I may, the efforts towards the commemoration of the Liberation War and its heroes through monuments, banners and structures throughout Dhaka marked the country’s efforts to keep its recent, valorous history alive, making it a part of the city’s environment. However, as an Indian researcher on the 1947 Partition, in its monuments and roadside banners, I searched for 1947 and glimpses of the land which existed before, a united Bengal.

In my search for the past, I turned to the people. Probing Bangladeshis across religious, linguistic and cultural lines, I asked for stories of undivided India, memories of migration and a newly formed Pakistan.

Nearly three years after the Partition, in retaliation to the attacks on the Hindu minority in, then East Pakistan’s Khulna district, historian and political activist Badruddin Umar’s home in Bardhaman, West Bengal was burned down, forcing the family to migrate to Dhaka. As a prominent figure in the Muslim League, I wondered as to why his father, Abul Hashim, did not migrate sooner?

"My father didn’t want to move because we had no reason to leave," 91-year-old Umar replies. "He didn’t want the Partition of Bengal, but when our house was set on fire, my father was very disturbed."

Even before the borders of India and Pakistan were declared, people started migrating to what they considered to be “safer regions”, as early as June in 1947. Hindus and Sikhs moved to what is now India, and Muslims to either wings of then, newly formed Pakistan. For Muslims of West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and parts of Uttar Pradesh, it was their geographical proximity to East Pakistan, which influenced their decision to migrate to the region.

Leaving behind their homes and families, millions turned into refugees. Men and women from these regions, as from West Bengal, travelled in trains, kilometre long caravans to escape the violence which had enveloped the subcontinent, and to fulfill their dream of a Muslim homeland.

It is the porousness of this border, due to an uneven geographical terrain, marked by rivers, forests and hills, which enabled people from either side to travel between India and Bangladesh for years after the Partition.

With a segment of its population residing in relief camps littered across Bangladesh, categorised as “Urdu speaking”, “Biharis” or “Stranded Pakistanis”, it becomes imperative to dissect the origin of these terms, as much as the reasons behind the displacement of this community.

During conversations with residents of one such camp in Dhaka, I came across instances of siblings divided between Bangladesh and India, of parents living in either India or Pakistan while their married daughters live in Bangladesh, seeing them only through occasional WhatsApp video calls.

While it was the division of the subcontinent in 1947 which drew this segment to East Pakistan, only a few members of these families further migrated to Pakistan post Liberation, dividing them across India, Bangladesh and Pakistan and leaving the younger generations of these refugees with a burdensome legacy of the partition. The names attributed to them, furthermore, mirror not only their predicament as a subcontinental group, but also highlight the presence of a linguistic minority in a country formed on the basis of language, on a land carved out to create a Muslim homeland, Pakistan.

As the largest forced migration in the world, with over 12 million displaced and 1 million killed, the Partition is inherently a people’s history. While the socio-political events of that time find space in the larger public memory, it is the history of partition’s survivors which has been forgotten, turning these survivors into victims every time another event rooted in 1947 occurs. 

With Bangladesh’s public lens, understandably, categorising the past in terms of pre and post Liberation, the Partition seems to vanish from its public memory and history. And as we mark the 77th year of the Partition, where the last generation of its survivors have reached their twilight years, it becomes urgent to rescue and bring the many personal histories of this event to the public discourse. For, it is only by returning to our collective past and the many histories which lie within it, that we can truly make sense of the present which surrounds us.

* Rashi Puri is an Indian oral history researcher